Blackrock

“There weren’t always dragons in the valley.”

Far above, rimmed by a massive circle of rock and earth, the night sky paled towards the first hint of dawn. The man stepped away from the dangling length of rope that disappeared upwards into the gloom, pushing aside any thought of climbing back up the crumbling chasm wall. He turned his face away from the fading stars, away from his past life and his family and even his own name; none of that mattered any more. Instead, he turned towards his final doom. His release.

At his feet several torches, thrown ahead of him to light his path, guttered and whined as errant winds whipped downward into the heart of the mountain. The man blinked against the flickering brightness as he stooped to close his hand around a burning brand.

His eyes climbed again to the rim of the valley above, sweeping from side to side, searching for…

There. A pale column of smoke, stark against the lightening sky.

Casting the torchlight before him, he strode forward, surefooted and unhesitating, into the failing night at the base of the crater.

“There weren’t always dragons in the valley. Was a time men thought them naught but a storyteller’s fantasy.”

The ghost of a smile haunted the man’s lips for the briefest moment as he remembered the words.

Loose rocks skittered into the darkness as his booted feet dislodged centuries of debris and ejecta, and occasionally the man was forced to alter course and bypass large chunks of black, glistening stone as he made his way to the centre of the chasm. After several minutes, the column of smoke stood clear and sharp before him, and he felt warmth on his face and hands. He came to an abrupt halt.

With two fingers of his right hand, the man inscribed a symbol in the air as his left hand pushed the burning brand, haft first, slowly into the solid rock. After a moment he pulled his hand away, and the guttering torch stood upright, buried two fists deep into the stone.

Above him, the last stars were pulling back to hide behind the blanket of a new sunrise—the last sunrise this man would ever know.

“In my father’s day, the mountain stood quiet. No smoke, no flame. But then the dragons came.”

He had volunteered for this mission. It was the crowning achievement of his life; a chance for glory, and, more importantly, a chance to know true and unfettered power. Life had lost its savour many years before, and death seemed now the last true adventure. To end his long existence riding the brink of such raw power was a dream he had never dared hope for.

So he told himself, this man who was about to die.

With trembling fingers, he reached into the pouch at his belt and drew forth his prize. He held the Splinter in a gentle grip, stroking the smooth edge with his thumb. No longer than a gold sovereign, thinner than the most cunningly wrought steel, and blacker than the deepest night, there were few forces in the world that could destroy this marvel, but awe made him exercise caution.

Almost against his will, his eyes drifted upward again to the dimly perceived rim of his tomb. No dark silhouettes stood tall against the gathering light, as he knew they would not; his companions had abandoned him to his fate almost the instant his hands touched the rope. They had not waited as he made his slow, careful climb down the crater wall. With a wrench, he tore his eyes away, and looked downwards to the rocks at his feet.

There was no fiery glow. No dragon’s cave. Instead, smoke poured from a small crack, not two spans long, a fissure in the earth so narrow that nothing larger than a rabbit could have squeezed through the gap. Just as he had expected. Just as his master had told him.

“'Course I never seen one. Maybe some have, but then again, maybe not. None in this town will climb that mountain. If there be dragons, they’ve not bothered us, and we’ll not bother them…”

The old fishwife turned away from him after those words, hurrying away with an occasional darted glance back towards the man, as though afraid his questions might somehow wake the dragon she so clearly feared—even though she scarcely believed in it herself.

His mind was wandering again. The fishwife he had spoken to the day before was an ignorant fool—and she would be dead before the day was done. They both would.

He shook his head, refocusing his thoughts on the task before him. He was disgusted to find that his hands trembled as he closed his left fist around the Splinter. He crouched, left knee behind and right knee pressed against his breast, his left fist pressed against the stone and his right hand splayed flat as he leaned forward, the rock warm beneath his fingers.

Stretching out with his senses, he allowed his mind to drift, sinking into the stone beneath him, questing out and down, following the smoking fissure deep into the dead, mindless heart of the mountain. Like water seeping into cracked earth, his power pervaded the hard stone, finding larger gaps, gaping chasms etched by centuries of heat and fire. He burrowed deeper, searching, seeking…

It was not enough. He was too weak, and his powers too limited. He was not weak—far from it—but he believed even his master would have found this beyond his considerable strength. He pulled in his will, and came back to his living, breathing body. The Splinter pressed hard into his left fist, a sharp pain that beckoned to him like a warm fire on a frozen winter’s night.

It was time. With one final, shuddering breath, the man refocused his will, teetered for a moment on the brink, and then reached through the Splinter and dove into a new and unimaginable well of power.

It was like nothing he could have conceived. The world around him fell away; stone, earth, air and water became less than a dim mist as his mind expanded outwards in every direction. Above him, he could feel thousands upon thousands—millions!—of insects slinking through the wet grass, some to hide from the sun and others to welcome it. Worms crawled in the dirt. A herd of goats gnawed the grass at cliff’s edge, unconcerned by the hundred-span drop into the foaming ocean beneath.

He perceived the first birds of the new day stirring in their trees, taking flight on the warm winds above the broken mountain. He saw as they saw: an island of green, surrounded by a merciless sea that beat against broken cliff walls in an unending battle as old as the stones themselves. He saw the neat, ordered town of Blackrock in its sheltered cove, row upon row of barracks and shopfronts and storehouses, marching from the sheltered bay to the foot of the mountain itself. It was beautiful too, in its own way, a thriving fishing port unchanged for a thousand years, home to three thousand souls, busy with their own concerns and hopes and dreams.

It was also a prison, of course, but no one spoke of that.

His perception returned to the mountain, and he sensed half a dozen men hurrying down the still shadowy slope, their feet slipping and sliding on the uneven ground as they ran to be away from him. His companions, returning to their master.

And he saw himself, more keenly than any hawk or gull could have done; a tired old man in a faded brown cloak, crouched near a smoking vent inside the crater of a long-dead firemount—long dead, but for the occasional gout of smoke, and the rarest hint of a flame to light the night sky and spark stories in the minds of frightened, uneducated villagers. The dragons in the valley at the top of the mountain…

The man smiled, and with an effort of will he discarded these distractions and threw his mind into the challenge before him. There were no dragons; there never had been. But today, he would show them what true dragonfire could do.

Quickly now, the power of the Splinter beating against his mind, he retraced his steps, quicker than conscious thought, and swept downwards, looking again for what he knew must be below...

And at last he found it. Deep—deeper than he would have believed possible—and far beyond the reach of any mortal power, lay an untapped ocean of fire, vast beyond imagining, roiling and bucking against the prison of stone above.

Now that he had it, it was almost no effort to flicker back up the path to his body. He blinked, seeing all at once the dark stone at his feet and the never ending fire beneath. His vision blurred and his head pounded with the strange double-vision, but it did not matter. Hesitation was gone. Doubt was gone.

This was power, and it was time it was put to good use.

The man lifted his right hand and inscribed a series of symbols onto the rock. As each symbol was completed, it seemed to suck in the light of his torch, and the very air around him dimmed momentarily. The man thrilled to see it, for this was just one more proof of the forces now his to command.

He finished the last symbol, and unleashed his will.

Heat poured into the man, a howling, piercing pillar of black flame without end. The man felt his body burning, but his mind rode the flame, pouring through the channel his will had laid out, burning a path from the world above to the fiery hell below. As it passed, the tiny cracks and fissures splintered and cracked, widening, falling away, dissolving to dust. Above, the man screamed, pulling burning air into tortured lungs for the last time while below, his mind, quickened by the blinding energy of the Splinter, plunged into the sea of molten rock and spinning flame.

As the man’s body crumbled to ash above, the river of fire surged upwards, freed from its ancient prison.

Fire at last burst forth in a vast explosion of energy, obliterating all traces of man and Splinter as it surged towards the pale blue sky. The mountain lived again. Today, Blackrock would burn, and the great war would begin.

There were never dragons in the valley. But there was always death.